I don't like the EU. This is less the result of a principled objection to sprawling, unaccountable institutions in whose fertile soil bureaucratic corruption can take root and flourish, than it is a hangover from my days as a law student. Then, my workload was doubled and confusion quintupled every time anyone in Brussels got bored and added another pencilled scribble to Article 374574, or bit into an overripe banana and issued a new directive about the care and preparation of soft fruits, thus sending every legal academic in the British Isles back to their books to work out if we were still a sovereign nation. "I think Johnny Foreigner's saying we have to kill Prince Philip with a bilberry punnet! Get me the Lord High Commissioner!"

At last, the EU has issued a directive that delights. Fortune-tellers, mediums, psychic healers, astrologers, clairvoyants and all other deluded folk (at best) and lying, fraudulent predators on the weak, vulnerable and desperate (at worst) must festoon their hoardings and websites with disclaimers attesting to the unproven nature of their work.

I know, a part of all of us believes that people who base their life choices on a set of picture cards simply because they are turned by a woman wearing an unfeasible number of scarves, should not be protected from their own stupidity because it may cause them to survive long enough to breed and spread their congenital imbecility. But I am in generous mood, and prefer to subscribe to the view that 'tis better that the recently bereaved, the elderly and anyone who doesn't fall into either category, but who is vulnerable to the specious comforts proffered by charlatans, are protected along with the incandescently stupid, rather than that the latter are suitably punished. Although I do keep a list of suitable punishments on my computer, a copy of which is available if you live near anyone with a belief in angels and send an sae to the usual address.

If that doesn't sway you, try this - the Spiritual Workers' Association is attacking the changes. You can't agree with a group that claims predicting the future and talking to dead people is a legitimate trade, and you can't support one that fails to call itself something like the High Arch Of The Gothic Chapter of Necromancy when it has the chance.

But what of the gaiety of the nation, you cry? What of the colour these flamboyant people add to the grey waste of life? First, they straighten our bananas, now these faceless bureaucrats seek to de-kink a life I frequently already feel to be too rectilinear to bear.

I hear you. And not only have I heard you, but I have leapt nimbly on ahead of you and present the following solution: Credulity Zones. Just as before the Sunday trading hours were reformed, the original laws were habitually loosened in designated - primarily tourist - areas, so with the new consumer protection regulations. Those plying their nonsense inside the boundaries do not have to display disclaimers but visitors to Blackpool, for example, can be greeted by a sign reading: "Welcome. Gypsy Petulengroes up ahead. You know they're fake, we know they're fake. We're just trying to create a heady holiday atmosphere here, OK? Don't go chucking your job/spouse in as a result of anything they say. Crystal balls not regulated by the FSA." And the sign would be in the shape of a tarot reader carrying a giant sack of money in one hand and a giant sack of crap in the other. Just to make things clear.